Date:         Wed, 27 Dec 2000 17:37:52 -0500
Reply-To:     Maryland Birds & Birding <MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM>
Sender:       Maryland Birds & Birding <MDOSPREY@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM>
From:         rick <rblom@BLAZIE.COM>
Subject:      Finding Snowy Owls
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        You know how far behind I am when I'm just getting around to this
post, but the winter is long and the Snowy Owl season is just begun.

Marshall wrote:
>
>Snowy Owls have a knack for turning up in weird places though. Note that a
>number of Snowy Owl records in MD have come from urban areas. The District of
>Columbia has several records from The Mall, Haines Pt., and National Airport.
>A number of other recent ones have shown up in downtown Baltimore (Ft.
>McHenry), downtown Annapolis (Hillsmere), and along the Washington Beltway
>and/or I-270. Watch those tall buildings on your commutes to or from work.

        Fifteen years ago I collected all the notes I could on wintering
Snowy Owls well south of the normal range. Most of them came from state
bird journals. I was looking for patterns about season, length of stay,
etc. The one thing I found was about diet. Snowies are bird hunters and
many of the birds that had come south were living on waterfowl. That was
true of the Ft. McHenry bird, which dined extensively on Am. Coots and
Green-winged Teal. They do take rats and other small mammals, especially in
urban areas, but waterfowl is a frequent prey item (I watched the one at
Hart-Miller goping after coots, Ruddy Ducks, and scaup).
        The lesson, I suppose, is to keep your eyes open at any site where
ducks are concentrated, which, in Chesapeake Bay Country, doesn't narrow it
down much.

Rick

PS - On his list of likely sites Marshall did not include Conowingo, which
has always been MY fantasy spot for one in Maryland!

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that
it is not utterly absurd. -- Bertrand Russell

Rick Blom
rblom@blazie.com
4318 Cowan Place
Belcamp, Maryland 21017
(410)575-6086
Editor: BWD Skimmer
(www.birdwatchersdigest.com)

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